So when Steven Pearlstein over at the Washington Post weighs in, I am interested. I am not in agreement with him on a lot of issues, but I think he got it right here:
Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.
If health reform is to be anyone's Waterloo, let it be theirs.
This, dear readers, is one of the legacies of the divide and conquer Bush administration approach to politics, economics and social justice. And if we ALL continue to act this way, we will bring down the Republic. Not exactly what I want my generation, or my parents’ to be known for in history.
That aside, he fails to say why he thinks Republicans want this failure to occur. I think it is a simple, pernicious reason - they want the economic, social and moral power they thought they had under the Bush Administration back, and they do not care what they do to achieve it. They tasted absolute power for 8 years and it corrupted them.
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You know what scares me about the whole idea of government getting into the health business (moreso than it currently is) is that it hasn't yet shown that it can do so, and keep the costs down to the taxpayer.
Miami alone, according to this article, is responsible for 3 billion dollars in Medicare fraud a year. 3 billion. A year.
And now we're going to expand the blanket of coverage, potentially opening up even further avenues for fraud. As a country that is already hemorrhaging money, I'd like to see some effort made to stop and PREVENT further bleeding, and I haven't seen that from this administration at all.
So I say, as a fiscal conservative, until the administration attempts to answer/tackle that question/issue, I'd like to see them halt these expansive projects.
Wishful thinking on all accounts, I know.
Of all the uninsured in the country the # that are uninsured through no fault of their own is a fairly small %. Kids are covered with S chip. Lots of teens don't take coverage when they could. People that make $50,000/ year opt out. I think this may possibly be more about exaggerating the problem than anything else.
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